Is America Exceptional?

Obama gave a big speech the other day, channeling  George Bush and saying we’ve just got to play the schoolyard bully, because America is exceptional.  In a way, this could be viewed as just a rhetorical flourish.  Every country is exceptional in some way – Switzerland for their punctuality, Brazil for Mardi Gras, Mongolia for yurts.  But in the U.S., this is actually a thing, for politicians to talk about American Exceptionalism, as if America is somehow better than other nations, has a higher set of values, has been chosen (by God, presumably) to lead all other nations into a bright and rosy future.

Now, that’s exceptional

Then Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he said (and I paraphrase) “Jesus H. Christ on a fucking pogo stick, you Americans are full of yourselves.  You are no more exceptional than I am a ballerina and the sooner you get over this ridiculous delusion, the better off the world will be.”

So: Is America exceptional?  It was once.  From the time of Columbus, America was a land of opportunity, a place where landless people could come and find land, a land where the persecuted could be free of their persecutors and paupers could have a decent shot at making a living.

The American Revolution was a pretty exceptional moment in human history.  It marked the end of the era of kings and the beginning of modern democracy.

For  another hundred years after that, America continued to lift its lamp beside the golden  door, to welcome the wretched refuse of foreign shores.  Then, in 1882, President Chester Alan Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, and from that point on, America was no longer exceptional.

Today, instead of being a light unto the world, it is a threat unto the  world.  It is easier to immigrate to Canada, or Europe, than it is to the U.S.

There is still a  great  deal of good in  America, a lot  to be proud of.  It’s the birthplace of Rock and Roll, Disneyland, the computer industry, McDonald’s and Hollywood.

But it’s not really exceptional.  It’s roughly the same form of government as every country in the developed world, and a similar corporate-controlled economy.  The people are biologically indistinguishable from people anywhere.  Despite its great wealth, most of its citizens are no better off than those in other developed countries – often worse.

Of course, what  happens in Syria depends on a lot more factors than whether or not America is exceptional.  But, at least on that point, Putin is absolutely right.